


Seer

by Justagirlwithapen



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justagirlwithapen/pseuds/Justagirlwithapen
Summary: From a young age, Hunith had these dreams. Sometimes, they were loose and languid and clear, other times they were composed of short lived blurs. She didn’t think much of them, not paying attention to the details.Until they came true.~~~Merlin’s story told by the dreams of his mother
Relationships: Balinor/Hunith (Merlin), Gaius & Hunith (Merlin), Gaius & Merlin (Merlin), Hunith & Merlin (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	Seer

From a young age, Hunith had these dreams. Sometimes, they were loose and languid and clear, other times they were composed of short lived blurs. She didn’t think much of them, not paying attention to the details. But then, when she was in her sixth year, she dreamt so vividly of a neighbor getting trampled by his small herd of cattle, dreamt so vividly the blood soaked mud and his crumpled body. It unnerved her, but she thought it to be a mere dream, and went on. A few days later, there was a cry and a shout from the paddocks nearby. Hunith followed the crowd of people, and glimpsed a look at her neighbor Gerry trampled on the ground.

Some years later, Hunith met a kindly physician, a few decades older, and a magic user. His name was Gaius. He had stumbled across their village by accident, but stayed a few days to help rid them of an illness. Hunith knew he’d come, of course. She had dreamt it days earlier. And she knew he could help her. She approached him where he sat at a wobbly table in some hut. He was alone, staring at papers which he scratched at with a quill dipped in dark ink. 

“I think I’m supposed to talk to you,” Hunith said, fiddling with the ragged hem of her dress. She was nearing 13 years, plain of face and brown of hair.

Gaius didn’t even look up from his work, merely saying, “Oh?”

“Yes,” said Hunith. “You are Gaius. You are friends with a king with a dragon crest, and are to be his physician soon.”

Gaius dropped his quill, and turned to face the young girl before him. 

“How did you know that? Tell me, who are you? What’s your name?”

“I am Hunith. And sometimes, at night, I get these peculiar dreams. Sometimes of the mundane, sometimes of the wretched. Last week I dreamt of a healing man with long light hair and clear eyes coming to our village. I dreamt of him helping us. I dreamt he could help me. Then, you showed up.”

“Besides myself, do your dreams ever come true?”

Hunith nodded. “I see accidents before they happen, storms before they appear on the horizon, cruelty before it comes to us. But I don’t understand it. And it scares me.”

“Fear not, Hunith. It seems you may be a seer. Not too common, but not unheard of. You see glimpses of future possibilities. It is a gift.”

“It sometimes feels like a curse, seeing all these things happen but not be able to do anything about them.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you much advice here, except to tell you that there is nothing wrong with you. All the same, if I were you I wouldn’t recommend telling many people of it. Some see seers as very valuable for the wrong reasons. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”

“It is okay.” 

“Feel free to write to me at the castle in Camelot if you need any advice or help.”

Hunith nodded and departed, and the next day Gaius did as well.

In her 19th year of life, Hunith dreamt of a man coming to the village. The man was young, looking only a tad older than she, and had eyes of the deepest blue and thick black hair. He was fleeing something, her dream didn’t tell her what, but she knew she could trust him. So a week later when a bedraggled young man stumbled into their village, she took him to her home where she lived alone, her parents having passed a few years past. The man was tall and lanky and awkward looking, but his shoulders promised a strength about him. His eyes were dark blue and his hair black and knotted, with a few leaves and twigs and clods of dirt tangled in. 

It was nearing night, but Hunith was outside, waiting. When she saw him, she approached, and guided him to her home, where a basin of water and medical supplies were laid out and ready. She sat him at the table, and joined him.

“Who are you?” he asked. 

“My name is Hunith. You?”

“Balinor. Do you always take strangers to your home to patch up with supplies already out?” he asked. She was helping him take off his shirt, so she could see the cut on his arm and wound above his hip.

“You’re the first, Balinor. May I ask, what do you flee from?”

He was tense, trying to see if this was a trap, ready to spring up and runaway at any moment.

“Seer. You are a seer.” Hunith looked up to him and arched a brow, as if to say, obviously.

“And you too are a being of magic. So? From what do you flee?”

Balinor winced as she flushed the gash on his arm with warm water.

“I come from Camelot. The king there recently decried magic, and is hunting down magic users and beings left and right. We’re being hunted, even the druids.”

“And you have a larger target on your back, no? Why is that?”

He gave her a half smile, before wincing again at her ministrations. “I’m a dragonlord, one of the last. Uther thinks that I may conquer Camelot with a dragon brigade. I tried laying low, tried looking for dragons to guide them to safety, but was found. I don’t understand why Uther decried this. Why he would hunt the thing that he wears as a crest.”

“I had a dream, a few months ago I think. In it, a king bearing a dragon crest used magic to have a son, and paid for it with his wife’s life.”

“That would make sense. Uther has been trying for an heir for years. His grief must have blinded him. And now I am wanted dead.”

Hunith finished wrapping up the last wound with scraps of boiled cloth. 

“You should stay the night. I can’t spare much, but I’ll pack a small bag of food for you. I fear if you stay another day, the villagers will get suspicious of you.”

“I’ll leave in the morning, before the sun raises itself above the horizon.”

Hunith nodded, and lay with him that night. Come morning, he was gone by the time she awoke to the roosters dawn crowing. She did not need a vision to know she was with child. And she did not need a vision to know she would never see Balinor again.

Roughly nine months after Balinor came, Hunith gave birth to a quiet baby boy, with the same eyes and hair as his father. For the first time, she had a vision while awake as she stared at her child. She saw a man that looked similar to Balinor, but with softer features. She saw the power he possessed, the raw magic within him, the depths of his abilities. She also saw him protecting a golden prince with a dragon crest. Knowing what she did about Camelot, she was afraid for her son, yet also proud of the man she saw him become. And she was a touch sad, because she knew that his destiny did not lie in their village.

Merlin grew up a scrappy little boy with pointed limbs, a dimpled smile, and magic that he didn’t really know how to use. Hunith kept him safe the best she could, and didn’t know if she was relieved or anxious that for many years none of her visions included her son or the golden prince.

When Merlin was in his 16th year, Hunith had another dream, another vision, and knew that it was time to send her boy away. She wrote Gaius, and he offered to take Merlin in. Merlin was sad to leave his home, yet excited for a new life in a city. Hunith watched him leave, and knew he would never come back home again. He would never build his own hut, or continue to share hers. He would never wed a village girl, and give Hunith grandchildren. It was for the best, yet broke her heart all the same.

The night he left, she dreamt him saving the prince. 

The following few years, her visions of Merlin were few, yet she treasured them all the same. She knew he was fine in Camelot without her. Knew he was becoming the man she saw in him the night he was born. Saw him make friends and find a father in Gaius. Saw him save the prince time and time again. Saw him fall in love with the golden prince, and pine away, content to be an unacknowledged manservant, never thanked for what he did. 

Hunith, on dark days and cold nights, thought that she didn’t have anything to live for. Her son’s home was Camelot, and she knew he could never leave his prince’s side. She had given her heart to Balinor, a man who gave her Merlin yet she never saw him face to face after that night. She dreamt of him dying in Merlin’s arms. She had nothing. The village had nothing but barren winters and gnawing stomachs. But she knew that if she died, Merlin would crumble and he needed to stay strong for Arthur. His destiny was the most important thing. 

Hunith lived for her visions of Merlin. They didn’t come often, maybe a few a year, but they kept her going when food was sparse and letters sparser. She just waited for those visions.

The worst vision Hunith ever had occurred some years after Merlin left. Arthur had been a king for some time, had wed the beautiful Guinevere, had become a better man than his father had ever been. But then she had a vision. She saw Arthur die on the battlefield, saw her son cradle him in his arms as he died, saw the tears, the last words, the kiss Merlin placed on Arthur’s forehead. She saw her son send the golden king to Avalon. She saw her son wait thousands of years, alone, for Arthur to come back. She felt Merlin’s pain so clearly and strongly that she woke with an ache in her heart. 

A week later, while she was in the fields, a wave of grief overcame her that was so powerful she just barely avoided crumbling to her knees. It was sorrow like she’d never felt before, like her heart was broken a thousand times over, like she would never recover from her grief. The pain lasted only for a few seconds, but Hunith knew. 

King Arthur had died.

Hunith’s visions in general but especially those of her son decreased over the years. She kept working, toiling away at rocky ground, trying to spring forth life where it was not meant to exist in the field by her hut. When she was in her sixties, she fell ill one winter. It hit her old bones hard, and she rasped every breath and coughed till it felt like her lungs would come out. She was dying. She knew it. A few days previous she had dreamt it. She was not afraid. 

Before her last breaths were taken, she had one last vision, only the second one she had while awake, the first being at Merlin’s birth. She saw a world she did not recognize. Instead of cobbles the streets were lined with continuous black rock. Creatures she had never seen before rumbled on, their bizarre wheels making her think they were some sort of carriage, yet she saw no horses. She then saw Merlin, on the shores of what Hunith assumed was Lake Avalon. He looked different too, yet discomfitingly the same. His trousers looked stiff and were dark blue and clung to him. His jacket clasped together in the front by some bizarre mechanism. He seemed the same age as when Arthur died, though. He held about him a world weariness and fatigue. He looked to be waiting, then Hunith saw something rise out of the lake. A figure clad in chainmail and armor with a sword at his hip and a scarlet cloak and golden hair. Arthur. Hunith saw her son smile as the once dead king slodged his way to the shoreline. They spoke but she could not hear the words they said. Then, they were embracing, arms tight around each other despite the fact that Arthur was still dripping wet. They talked some more, their foreheads pressed together, before they kissed. The last thing she saw before she passed was her son with that wide dimpled grin, the grin that got him out of so much trouble when he was younger, a smile mirrored on his prince’s face.

Hunith died peacefully, smiling one last time, content in the knowledge that her son would be okay.


End file.
